TARMO PIKNER ⟩ A compromise with the Social Democrats or rather with the future of Estonia?

Right to vote and a gray passport. Illustration: Postimees

• The citizens of the country are the ones who maintain the continuity of Estonia.
• Holders of a gray passport are in a privileged position.
• Their right to vote would be compromising with Estonia's future.

The Constitution is a serious thing and if we don't take it seriously, we don't take our country seriously. Estonian state bodies and local government councils must be elected only by the citizens of this country, writes columnist Tarmo Pikner.

Those who do not remember the past,... Well – a worn-out phrase, but history wears out more every day, the more we move away from the event observed. I would really like to hope that Estonian citizens, and especially those who are currently flipping out about the distribution of voting rights, will remember that in addition to the power of the Singing Revolution, a cornerstone of the restoration of Estonia's independence was the continuation of the state's continuity. And those who maintain the continuity can be none other than the citizens of the country, not foreigners or immigrants from the time of socialism. This is where the crux of the discussion should be, it is not about the colors of the passports.

Although, while in exile, August Rei, as the acting president who inherited the Otto Tief government as the oldest minister, managed to create a situation (unintentionally, I hope) for a break in continuity by not forming a government in exile for eight years (instead of six months), we still managed to get many things in order easier by emphasizing national continuity. And when the prime minister in exile, Heinrich Mark, acting as president, placed his credentials on the desk of Ülo Nugis in 1992, it may have had more of a symbolic value (after all, the Estonian state itself had been standing for a year), but symbols represent fundamental values.

Worse than the break in legal continuity is the mental break in continuity in our memory. If we no longer remember – why, how and with what efforts Estonia's independence was restored, then the situation we are in now will happen. We are not solving the process that was left unfinished 31 years ago, but are desperately looking for alternative ways so that the current voters do not leave the politicians behind. Rumor has it that in the frenzy of getting votes, creating an individual section in our Constitution for three Swiss people and Turks is even being talked about. Is this a serious discussion? I don't think so.

Yes, the actual initiator of this issue this time was the Kremlin, which is waging a war in Europe, but the key to the solution is still at Toompea. Summarizing what is happening – the constitutional committee is discussing along these lines: we have red, gray and purple passports here and we will see where a passport fits at a given moment. In reality, the root causes of the past are not being grasped, not to mention looking to the future to prevent possible undesirable incidents.

While the principle of free movement applies to EU citizens, why does it have to apply to gray passport holders as well? They even have an advantage over Estonian citizens, who cannot cross the Russian border without a visa.

Of course, we cannot elect Jüri Adams or Liia Hänni (the main authors of the constitution) as the chair of the constitutional committee for life, but to jump with the credentials of the entertainment world immediately to the position of chairman of the committee on the country's foundations – this was a big step for Hendrik Johannes Terras (Estonia 200), but a very small step for Estonian society. Since the legal basis of a country is its constitution, the Riigikogu constitutional committee should be one of the main bodies that will ensure that the country's foundations do not start to shake. In other words, at least its leader should have the appropriate education and experience. One could also say that if the chancellor of justice (defender of constitutionality) is subject to certain job requirements, then the same should be done to the chairman of said committee. In other words, the constitutional committee should give Ülle Madise as little work as possible.

And now, about the color of the passports. It might be recalled that the so-called gray passport arose out of a practical need to define stateless persons when the USSR collapsed in 1992 and left persons living outside the Russian Federation without automatic citizenship. Alarm bells started ringing because nearly half a million stateless persons had been created in Estonia with this, including family members of military personnel (Soviet troops were still in Estonia). With the 1993 Citizenship Act, the foreigner's passport was established, which is both an identity document and a travel document. It was also high time, because separatism was rearing its head in East-Viru County and illegal autonomy referendums were organized in Sillamäe and Narva in the summer of 1993. It was also at that time that the so-called Karaganov doctrine came out, which stipulated that, in order to gain political influence in the «near abroad», Moscow should use the immigrants living there by acting as the protector of their human rights. In reality, we are currently protecting their rights and allowing gray passport holders to travel the world and elect our bodies of power.

At the same time, disputes were also held during the drafting of the Citizenship Act, and zero-option citizenship – citizenship for all persons living in Estonia – was very seriously on the agenda, but this major accident was prevented. However, a smaller bomb was left ticking and should now be defused.

The main author of the idea of a foreigner’s passport or gray passport was a member of the Riigikogu, Mart Nutt, while the so-called Nansen passport introduced in the twenties of the last century, which countries issued to those fleeing from the Russian civil war, was probably the model here (in the author's opinion, one of the last users of this was the freedom fighter Artur Sirk, who received a Nansen passport from the Finnish authorities, fleeing through Europe).

And yet, we have even given gray passport holders a privileged status – they can travel freely throughout the European Union and Russia. Is traveling abroad a human right? While the principle of free movement applies to EU citizens, why does it have to apply to gray passport holders as well? They even have an advantage over Estonian citizens, who cannot cross the Russian border without a visa. And as life shows, gray passport holders often also have a red passport, which still classifies a large number of them as citizens of the aggressor country. So we ourselves are fools and have created a situation where there is no point for non-citizens to learn Estonian in order to get citizenship.

And if a representative of our western partners wants to say that we are engaged in discrimination against a group of people, then in today's globalist world there are so many other phenomena that need to be clarified, so let the protection of the country's constitutional interests be up to us. Major powers do not understand the depth of our problems anyway, and it is all the more so that we should understand our own fundamental issues and do so outside the party box.

We are living in the grip of Putin's doctrine (Munich 2007) and should have learned this by now. But it seems that we still have not.

By the way, it is not at all without meaning to recall that back in 2017, Jüri Ratas as the Center Party prime minister once again came out with a dead dog that had already been thrown over the fence once – with the zero-option of citizenship, i.e. with the proposal to grant citizenship to all non-citizens. Of course – votes needed to be collected at the elections. This shows nothing other than that, in addition to changing the badge of party affiliation on the lapel, more and more opportunities are being sought for fishing for votes. Further proof that the definition of citizenry is of existential importance to the country. And while it was left unfinished at one time, it must be solved as the root cause today.

If Prime Minister Kristen Michal (Reform Party) directly says that the current proposal to amend the Constitution, i.e. preserving the right to vote to gray passport holders, was a compromise with the Social Democrats, then in reality this compromise is being made with the future of the Estonian state.

Yes, the votes of the electorate show the quality of a politician. But which voters? A recent example – Estonian teachers are essentially being harassed in the Kohtla-Järve Slavic Basic School. And this is being led by none other than the chairman of the local council, member of the Riigikogu and Social Democrat Eduard Odinets, who is the biggest champion of the voting rights of persons without citizenship.

Finally, once again – the Constitution is a serious thing and if we don't take it seriously, we don't take our country seriously. Estonian state bodies and local government councils must be elected only by the citizens of this country.

And if Prime Minister Kristen Michal (Reform Party) directly says that the current proposal to amend the Constitution, i.e. preserving the right to vote to gray passport holders, was a compromise with the Social Democrats, then in reality this compromise is being made with the future of the Estonian state. I tend to think that even the future high representative of the EU for foreign policy would not have agreed to such a compromise.